"Cracking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... name some article connected with a stage coach; the wheels, the horses, the whip, the bridle, etc., may be chosen. These the leader jots down on a piece of paper and then begins to tell a thrilling story. "The stage coach left the old Stag Inn, amidst the thundering of the horses' hoofs and the cracking of the driver's whip." Some member will probably have chosen to be the horses, another the whip, and as their names are mentioned they must rise, twirl round and sit down again. Then the narrator continues: "For some miles all went well, then a bridle gave way (the bridle must rise ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... nothing of Nagendra, neither in the path, nor on the roof, nor at the window. Kunda thought, "He has not risen yet, it is not time; I will sit down." She sat waiting amid the darkness under the trees; a fruit or a twig might be heard, in the silence, loosening itself with a slight cracking sound and falling to the earth. The birds in the boughs shook their wings overhead, and occasionally the sound of the watchmen knocking at the doors and giving their warning cry was to be heard. At length the cool wind blew, forerunner of the dawn, and the papiya (a bird) filled ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
... cashier, Kailash by name, who was like one of the family. He was a great wit, and would be constantly cracking jokes with everybody, old and young; recently married sons-in-law, new comers into the family circle, being his special butts. There was room for the suspicion that his humour had not deserted him even after death. Once my elders were engaged in ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... upon our fresh balsam beds. When I rose I could not have told whether it was twilight or dawn. The blizzard howled outside, but Hal had a cheerful fire cracking inside." ...
— The Blue Birds' Winter Nest • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... the slow horse started again he will find that the free horse has made another jump, and again flew back, and now he has them both badly balked, and so confused that neither of them knows what is the matter, or how to start the load. Next will come the slashing and cracking of the whip, and hallooing of the driver, till something is broken or he is through with his course of treatment. But what a mistake the driver commits by whipping his horse for this act. Reason and common sense should teach him that the horse was ...
— The Arabian Art of Taming and Training Wild and Vicious Horses • P. R. Kincaid
... might be vindicated, took so firm a hold of his mind that he felt chilled through and through. Hopeless of obtaining more news, he remounted, and traversed the woods afresh, calling Pierre with all his might, whistling, cracking his whip, and snapping the branches that the whole forest might reecho with the noise of his coming; then he listened for an answering voice, but he heard no sound save the cowbells scattered through the glades, ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... situation, in which the most poignant agony of mind and dreary anticipations would have been absolutely required of him. He pictured the scene to himself; he lying fermenting in the barrel, like a curious vintage; the bear sniffing querulously round it, perhaps cracking it like a cocoa-nut, or extracting him like a periwinkle! Of these chances he had been deprived by the interference of the crew. Friends ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... there was interposed the stupid, sullen wall of prejudices and suspicions with which weakness naturally imagines to shelter and protect itself from force. But this wall is cracking, tottering, and beginning to crumble to ruins under the action of the soil and the atmosphere—under the influx of the sentiments awakened by this great movement of friendship on the part of the United States toward the ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... usually balanced in the centre upon two wheels, which diminishes much of the pressure upon the horse. Yet the caps of the wheels are frightfully long, and inconveniently projecting: while the eternally loud cracking of the whip is most repulsive to nervous ears. On market days, the horses stand pretty close to each other for sale; and are led off, for shew, amidst boys, girls, and women, who contrive very dexterously to get out of the way of their active hoofs. The French seem to have ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... and flinging his plumed hat on the table, as who should say, Lie there, authority! he swallowed a hearty cup of wine to the happiness of the married couple, and began to amble about the room, mumping, laughing, and cracking jests, neither the wittiest nor the most delicate, but accompanied and applauded by shouts of his own mirth, in order to encourage that of the company. Whilst his Majesty was in the midst of this gay humour, and ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... spent the money with the young artist. A common tap-room was an indifferent school of manners, whatever it might be for painting, and there this gifted lad was now often to be found late in the evening, carousing with hostlers and potboys, handing round the quart pot, and singing his song or cracking ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... of a peepul tree. One day the peepul tree spoke and said to him "If you pour milk every day at my roots I will grant you a boon." So thenceforward the Goala every day poured milk at the roots of the tree and after some days he saw a crack in the ground; he thought that the roots of the tree were cracking the earth but the fact was that a snake was buried there, and as it increased in size from drinking the milk it cracked the ground and one day it issued forth; at the sight of it the Goala was filled with fear and made sure that the snake would ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... afforded to prevent any undue strain on the vine, and this should be accomplished by nets specially made for the purpose, or by suspending small flat boards of half-inch deal with copper wires, each fruit resting on its board, until the cracking round the stem gives warning that the fruit should be cut and placed in the fruit room for a few days to complete the ripening for the table. In houses of the kind described Melons and Cucumbers are occasionally grown together. But although this may be done, and there are ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... I got back to New Bosting shortly after the rumpus. I would have been in time enough to have had a hand in the wind-up, if it hadn't been that I got into a little circus of my own. Me and a couple of Apaches tried the game of cracking each other's heads, that was spun out longer than we meant, and so, as I was obsarving, when I rode into town, the fun was all over. I found Misther Simpson just gettin' ready to take your trail, and he axed me to do the same, and I was mighty glad to do it. I was ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... for a frontal attack; the men seized the children and with the women at their heels they ran as fast as their legs could take them. On the shore every one fell to his knees in prayer. The strongest men closed their eyes, too horrified to watch the outcome. The noise of the cracking of the ice increased. A loud report, as of a dozen cannon, and the Danube was a river again—and all, all ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... can be used for soft boiling or poaching up to November. Before boiling such eggs prick a tiny hole in the large end of the shell with a needle to keep them from cracking, as the preservative seals the pores of the shell and prevents the escape of gases, which is possible in ...
— Every Step in Canning • Grace Viall Gray
... With a great cracking of whips and creaking of wheels the spectral party drove off, to the tune of "Good-night, ladies, we're going to leave you now." Far down the road the chorus came floating back to the listeners on the porch, "Merrily we roll along, roll along, ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... he whispered, cracking the table with his fist. "Russ, you sure rung true to me. But never as ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... a thousand noises. The Glacier wall was cracking and splitting with the noise of thunderclaps; the machines were whirring and banging and crashing. It was ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... on the other side, and they drove on out of the grove, their wheels silently crushing delicate-patterned mosses, hyacinths, primroses, lords-and-ladies, and other strange and ordinary plants, and cracking up little sticks that lay across the track. Their way homeward ran along the crest of a lofty hill, whence on the right they beheld a wide valley, differing both in feature and atmosphere from that of the Hintock precincts. It was the cider country, ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... historical truth to me, that this hereditary war of the Big-endians and Little-endians had been conducted by our own immediate forefathers. Strictly speaking, mind you, neither party cracked the egg—that too—dainty product being taboo for rent—but they compromised by cracking each other's domes of thought. Rory could n't get away from the strong probability that my grandfather had overpowered his own contemporary ancestor in the name of the Glorious, Pious and Immortal Memory, and had chopped his head off with ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... whining, with score of lolling tongues and waving tails, came surging down the narrow lane which leads from the Twynham kennels to the bank of Avon. Two russet-clad varlets, with loud halloo and cracking whips, walked thigh-deep amid the swarm, guiding, controlling, and urging. Behind came Sir Nigel himself, with Lady Loring upon his arm, the pair walking slowly and sedately, as befitted both their age and their condition, while they watched with a smile in their eyes the ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... pouring over us. The wind was furious, but the nook we had selected was most sheltered, and, but for the uproar it made among the trees, we should have hardly known the real extent of the hurricane. Sometimes the thunder cracking over our heads awoke us in the night, and we congregated together for companionship and comfort. In the day-time we were very busy; I was inventing a spinning wheel; Schillie and the girls concocting chessmen; the boys knocking up shelves, ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... cut from the vines, is either dipped in clear water to first rinse it of particles of dust and other foreign matter, or it is taken direct to the scalder and immersed in a boiling alkaline mixture called 'legia' (lye) until the grapes show an almost imperceptible cracking of the skin, the operation consuming perhaps from one-fourth to one-half of a minute. This dipping calls for skill on the part of the operator, the duration of the emersion depending on the strength and temperature of the mixture and the condition of the ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... his position on the other side of the wall. He waited till the old lady was fairly over, and then commenced running. The old lady pursued with vindictive animosity, cracking the whip in a suggestive manner. Pomp doubled and turned in a most provoking way. Finally he had recourse to a piece of strategy. He had flung himself, doubled up in a ball, at the old lady's feet, and she, unable to check ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... useful species, oxen, asses, sheep, and goats. Some of the ancient monuments, cylinders, and clay tablets reproduce in a rough manner scenes from pastoral life. The door of the fold opens, and we see a flock of goats sallying forth to the cracking of the herdsman's whip: when they reach the pasture they scatter over the meadows, and while the shepherd keeps his eye upon them, he plays upon his reed to the delight of his dog. In the mean time the farm-people are engaged in the careful preparation ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... on the door while Professor Hooker wrathfully besought the intruder to depart before he took active measures. There was the cracking of glass. ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... youthful Jehu of the light vehicle behind. He came desperately on, cracking his whip, shouting "G'lang, Gee'p," rattling down hill, and galloping up, and whirling round corners, in spite of the warning "Steady, whoa!" addressed to him by our careful escort. Once the rattling behind entirely ceased, and we stopped, our driver being anxious for the safety of his own team, ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... it is! My body is cracking all over!' said the Snow-man. 'The wind is really cutting one's very life out! And how that fiery thing up there glares!' He meant the sun, which was just setting. 'It sha'n't make me blink, though, and I shall keep ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... a bad time,' said I one day to a great dark bargee who was streaming from every pore, as much from bad temper as from the exertion of cracking his whip, and whose haggard horse looked as if he would soon break off in the middle from the strain of trying to move the barge, which ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... prove it. You bring me a letter from Bulstrode saying he doesn't believe you've been cracking and promising to pay your debts out o' my land, and then, if there's any scrape you've got into, we'll see if I can't back you a bit. Come now! That's a bargain. Here, give me your arm. I'll try and walk ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... perhaps the first time in his experience he had ever done so. Somehow the shell did not seem so to cover her. She was such a tight little body, a close-bound fagot of reserves and inhibitions. She had never exuded the slightest humanity. And now the shell was cracking and little glints were showing through. "No, Aunt Lorry," he said. "Not now. There's nothing to be gained by talking—unless you have any ideas as to ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... Sylvie had been cracking a plateful of butternuts; picking out meats, I mean, from the cracked nuts, to make a plateful; and that, if you know butternuts, you know is no small task. She brought them to her mother, with some grated maple sugar sprinkled ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... bad entirely; and next day, before they started again, they tied another millstone to him, and they said, "Well, you'll not get away from here in a hurry anyhow, boy." So on they went again on their journey, laughing and cracking jokes, and telling passages, to pass the time; but that night again, when they went to stop from their journey, lo! and behold ye, who does they see coming tearing after them but my poor Jack, once more, ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... boy, keep your papers in order. I find a dissertation on 'The Commerce of Carthage' stuck in my large paper copy of 'Dibdin's Decameron,' and an 'Essay on the Metaphysics of Music' (pray, my dear fellow, beware of magazine scribbling) cracking the ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... Now de rest of you haitians scatter way from in front dis store. Dis ain't no place for chillen, nohow. (gesture of shooing) Gwan! Thin out! Every time a grownperson open they mouf y'all right dere to gaze down they throat. Git! (The children exit sullenly right. In the silence that follows the cracking of Walter's peanut shells can be heard ...
— De Turkey and De Law - A Comedy in Three Acts • Zora Neale Hurston
... was soon put out, and the frightened occupants of the house, who had fled in scant attire, reassembled at dawn to find that little mischief had been done beyond the cracking of window panes and smoking of ceilings. In fact, the chief sufferer by the fire was Mrs. Manstey, who was found in the morning gasping with pneumonia, a not unnatural result, as everyone remarked, of her having hung out of an open window ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... leaven must be burned, but he who eats it is free. When it begins to crack it must be burned, and he who eats it must be cut off. "What is leavening?" "Like the horns of locusts." "Cracking?" "When the cracks intermingle." The words of R. Judah. But the Sages say, "if either of them be eaten, the eater must be cut off." "And what is leavening?" "All which changed its appearance, as when a man's hairs stand on ...
— Hebrew Literature
... higher and higher, and the day grew hotter and hotter, but Mollie, skimming along the bottom of the sea in the Nautilus was oblivious of heat. She was walking in the submarine forest of the Island of Crespo, treading on sand "sown with the impalpable dust of shells", when the sudden cracking of a sun-dried branch near at hand startled her and reminded her that time was passing. She closed her book, crept out of her tree, and ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... the whole world, so Joseph distrusted himself, which made him shy and awkward in company. My mother tells how, at the wedding of his only son, my father, Joseph sat the whole night through in a corner, never as much as cracking a smile, while the wedding guests danced, ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... speculation and activity fermented along, were in all things clear for progress, liberalism; their politics, and view of the Universe, decisively of the Radical sort. As indeed that of England then was, more than ever; the crust of old hide-bound Toryism being now openly cracking towards some incurable disruption, which accordingly ensued as the Reform Bill before long. The Reform Bill already hung in the wind. Old hide-bound Toryism, long recognized by all the world, and now at last obliged to recognize its very self, for an overgrown Imposture, supporting ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... place at midnight, in a gloomy dungeon, dimly, lighted by torches. The victim—whether man, matron, or tender virgin—was stripped naked, and stretched upon the wooden bench. Water, weights, fires, pulleys, screws—all the apparatus by which the sinews could be strained without cracking, the bones crushed without breaking, and the body racked exquisitely without giving up its ghost, was now put into operation. The executioner, enveloped in a black robe from head to foot, with his eyes glaring at his victim through ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... hold of the railings. She came over to my side. Up the road I heard in the distance the crunching of heavy wheels. A wagon was passing through the lodge gates. John, the woodman, was walking with unaccustomed briskness by the horses' heads, cracking his whip as he came. I looked into the ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the wood-cutters always came and felled some of the largest trees. This happened every year, and the young Pine Tree, that was now quite well grown, trembled at the sight; for the great stately trees fell to the earth with noise and cracking, the branches were lopped off, and the trees looked quite bare, they were so long and thin; you would hardly know them for trees, and then they were laid on carts, and horses dragged ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... not as bricks or stones built into a wall by mortar or cement but as concrete, eternal as the hills, needing not to be chiselled and split but only to be moulded and "set" at just the right moment. If this gives any suggestion of want of permanence, of liability of cracking, then the figure is not fortunate. I mean only to suggest, by still another metaphor, that out of the myriad rugged individualities, idiosyncrasies, and independences a new rock ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... the great burning logs, so much more poetic than this peat smoke which hurt one's eyes. Ah, but then there was O'Flanagan. Well, he would not be much in the way. He liked riding over his new estate in his buckskin breeches, cracking his great loaded whip. She had met him herself once or twice, and the great shy creature had blushed furiously and ridden off down the first bridle-path. "I turn his horse's head as well as his," she had thought ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... there were none, or none to throw me back. At the stream-side, holding by an elder-bough, I tested the ice with my weight, proved it firm, crossed without so much as cracking it, and breasted a bare grassy slope, too little to be called a down, where a few naked hawthorns chafed and creaked in the wind. Above it was an embankment rounded like a bastion, up the left side of which I crept—or, you might ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... this instant a loud cracking sound was heard in the room. Angelique stood still, once more struck with terror, and recollecting the cry she had heard. Her hair, which was already loosened, escaped entirely from its bonds, and she felt it rise on her head as the figures on ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... it didn't matter. In a perfect orgy of energy they were hurling book after book in all directions until sometimes three or four were in the air at once, smashing against shelves, cracking the glass of pictures on the walls, falling in bruised and torn heaps upon the floor. It was fortunate that no customers happened to come in, for it is certain they would never have come in again—the noise ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... acknowledged the desirability of our presence on business grounds, if not on personal ones. It seemed to be a preconcerted public intention to make as much noise in a given space as possible—we spoke of the cheerfulness of it, stopping our ears. The cracking of the drivers' whips alone made a feu de joie that never ceased, and listening to it we knew that we ought to feel happy and elated. The driver of our fiacre was fat and rubicund, he wore a green coat, brass buttons, and a shiny top hat, and looked as if he drank constantly. ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... you only would!' cried the Princess, and at the same moment she heard a crick-cracking in all her bones. She grew tall and straight and pretty, with eyes like shining stars, and a skin as white ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... and I knew what that meant: my chimney had been wrenched from its foundations, and the upper part of it had now toppled over. I could hear, through the storm, the bricks banging and sliding upon the slanting roof. Continuous sounds of cracking and snapping came to me through the closed front windows, and these were caused, I supposed, by the destruction of the stakes of my vines as the ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... swore for ten minutes. Then he quieted down and began to think. He was shut out—his money was gone. But—"By gad, sah," he said cracking his ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... he had covered several miles on either side of the ranch. He was covered with dust and his lips were cracking in spite of his free use of the canteen. He was tired to the very bones of him. The hot sand had blistered his feet. The cholla had torn his hands. When the sudden blackness of night descended, he determined to rest once more until the moon rose. He did not think that he was more ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... cracking," explained Betty. "It isn't anything. It often happens on a big surface, and we're on a wide part ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Winter Camp - Glorious Days on Skates and Ice Boats • Laura Lee Hope
... of the; representatives of the eyebrows in the; hands of the; absence of mastoid processes in the; platforms built by the; cracking nuts with a stone; direction of the hair on the arms of the; supposed evolution of the; polygamous and social ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... They've been a-cracking it up to us, and making believe as it was the loveliest place as ever was, and now we've got to it, why it's ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... the voice of the American tradition strained to the utmost to make itself audible to the new world, and cracking into italics and breaking into capitals with the strain. The rest of that enormous bale of paper is eloquent of a public void of moral ambitions, lost to any sense of comprehensive things, deaf to ideas, impervious ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... without being bound by any system of thought, sees that the kernel is within the shell, and that, instead of crunching up the whole nut like a gross and indifferent feeder, the essence of the thing is obtained by cracking the shell and casting it away. All emotion, all sensation, lends itself to this process, else it could not be a part of man's development, an essential of his nature. For that there is before him power, life, perfection, ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... Then, a premature turn of a wheel pitches him forward with a good chance to alight upon his feet, whereas the same thing happening when he was facing in the opposite direction would cause him to tumble over backward, with excellent prospects of cracking his skull. But in obedience to an immutable but inexplicable vagary of sex, a woman follows the patently wrong, the obviously dangerous, ...
— 'Oh, Well, You Know How Women Are!' AND 'Isn't That Just Like a Man!' • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... calling and calling for the 'Gray-Plush Squirrel Lady'. So I hired a big gray squirrel coat from a furrier whom I know, and I ripped up my muff and made me the very best sort of a hot, gray, smothery face that I could—and I went out to Cambridge and sat three hours on the footboard of a bed, cracking jokes—and nuts—to beguile a little child's death-pain. And somehow it broke my heart—or my spirit—or something. Somehow I think I could have stood it better with my own skin face! Anyway the little girl doesn't need me any more. Anyway, it doesn't matter if someone ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... The stage whirled along at a spanking gait, the breeze flapping the curtains and suspended coats in a most exhilarating way; the cradle swayed and swung luxuriously, the pattering of the horses' hoofs, the cracking of the driver's whip, and his "Hi-yi! g'lang!" were music; the spinning ground and the waltzing trees appeared to give us a mute hurrah as we went by, and then slack up and look after us with interest and envy, or something; and as we lay ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... into Apia with a load of copra and his letter for the outgoing mail. The town was in an uproar, and cracking like the Fourth of July. Jack wondered what in thunder it was about, as he landed at Leicester's wharf and discovered the postmaster lying underneath the post office in a nest of sand bags. Crawling in after the functionary, Jack ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... people and of jostling crowds, of stuffy churches and of the chilly halls of the Museum, of steep dirty streets and of glaring boulevards, so that we begin to sigh for fresh air and a change of scene. Nor is there any means of escape within the precincts of the city itself from the eternal cracking of whips, from the insulting compliments (or complimentary insults) of the incorrigible cabmen, from the continuous babel of unmusical voices, and from the reiterated strains of "Santa Lucia" or "Margari" howled from raucous throats or strummed from rickety street-organs. ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... bent upon cracking melon seeds, saying nothing but simply pursing up her lips and smiling, when, strange coincidence, Hsueeh Yen, Tai-yue's waiting-maid, walked in and handed her ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... water floats a corpse (a beautiful head) and a green sea and atmosphere envelops all this dismal group. The old father is represented with a bag of money in his hand; and the tree, which the man catches, is cracking, and just on the point of giving way. These two points were considered very fine by the critics: they are two such ghastly epigrams as continually disfigure French Tragedy. For this reason I have never been able to read Racine with pleasure,—the ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... rest,—five or six uneasy crabs which they had caught and harnessed to a tiny sledge made from a curved root and a shingle tied together with a bit of sea-kelp. And when the crabs scurried away over the hard sand, waving their claws wildly, Noel and Mooka would caper alongside, cracking a little whip and crying "Hi, hi, Caesar! Hiya, Wolf! Hi, hiya, hiya, yeeee!"—and then shrieking with laughter as the sledge overturned and the crabs took to fighting and scratching in the tangled harness, ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... little noise. He looked around and what do you think he saw? Another egg was cracking because another little chicken was going pick, peck inside. Soon out of the shell came a little baby brother. And then he heard another funny little noise, and another shell broke and out of the shell came a little baby sister. And then he heard another little ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... weights on their ankles, and the sands sank under him. Then, by-and-by, the first wife put her child into John's arms and said, 'Save him,' and slipped off his back into the water. 'What sound was that?' asked the Prince. 'That was my heart cracking,' said John. So they went on till the sand rose half-way to their knees. Then the Prince stopped and put his child into John's arms. 'Save him,' he said, and fell forward on his face; and John's heart ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... frontiermen habitually getting accustomed to caution in most of their movements, and it now lay on the glassy water appearing to float in air, partaking of the breathing stillness that seemed to pervade the entire scene. At this instant a dry stick was heard cracking on the narrow strip of land that concealed the bay from the open lake. Both the adventurers started, and each extended a hand towards his rifle, the weapon never being out of reach ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... and splintering in every direction. There was a great gap already in the side of the steamer, as though some one had taken a cut out of it. Then, high above the shrieking of the escaped steam and the cracking of woodwork, the siren of the boat screamed out its frantic summons for help. Geraldine for the moment lost her nerve. She began to shriek, and ran towards the nearest boat, into which the people were climbing like ants. Thomson ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... funny gentleman, thought I, not much fancying, however, his levity concerning my great-uncle, he'll be cracking his jokes the whole voyage; and so I afterward said to one of the riggers on board; but he bade me look out, that he ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... basis. A schedule for Persian walnuts is very much needed as indicated by the recent contest in which confusion occurred related to there being no recognized standards of evaluation. With the Persian walnut such matters as the method of cracking and the importance of such characters as sealing of nuts, recovery of whole halves and others ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various
... were not long wanting to complete the infernal chorus. From the dense, dark forest came the blood-curdling roars of tigers, panthers, and bears mingled with the loud bellowing and heavy stampede of elephants; we could distinctly here the cracking of boughs hurled to the ground in their furious course, and the crashing of bamboo, which with them is a favourite food. One might have said that an immense legion of demons had invaded the forest, because in its ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... factory hands, butchers, Jews, shopmen, workmen's wives, a soldier, two ladies, a young one and an old one with bracelets on her arm, and a severe-looking gentleman with a cockade on his black cap. All these people were sitting quietly; the bustle of taking their places was long over; some sat cracking and eating sunflower seeds, some ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... staggered as well as we could, into the gallery, where the servants were already arranged on their knees, praying and crossing themselves with all their might. The shock lasted above a minute and a half, and I believe has done no injury, except in frightening the whole population, and cracking a few old walls. All Mexico was on its knees while it lasted, even the poor madmen in San Hepolito, which A—— had gone to visit in company with Seor ——-. I have had a feeling of sea-sickness ever since. ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... a good seat—very strong, only he looks like 'thrusting.' Nobody rides like Dad—so beautifully quiet!" Indeed, Winton's seat on a horse was perfection, all done with such a minimum expenditure. The hounds swung round in a curve. Now she was with them, really with them! What a pace—cracking! No fox could stand ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... meeting with the Eskimos. It may well be believed that there were both astonishment and satisfaction on board the Hope that night, when the hunting party returned, much sooner than had been expected, with the whip cracking, the men cheering, the dogs howling, and the sledge ...
— Fast in the Ice - Adventures in the Polar Regions • R.M. Ballantyne
... know how to tell you. For several nights, I seemed to hear, both in the park and out of the park, round the pavilion, unusual sounds, sometimes footsteps, at other times the cracking of branches. The night before the attack on me, when I did not get to bed before three o'clock in the morning, on our return from the Elysee, I stood for a moment before my window, and I felt ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... to right and left, from the outer wall of the Tower on the one side, to where the rising ground on the left was hidden under the thick foliage in the foreground. There was a murmur of talking and laughter, the ringing of hand-bells, the cracking of whips and the cries of children. The backs of the crowd were turned to the steps: there was plainly something going on higher up the slope, and it seemed somewhat away to ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... glass. The skilled Italian artisans sent over to put the works into operation were intractable and mutinous. After trying in various ways to discourage the enterprise, so that they could return to Europe, these men brought matters to a close by cracking the furnace with a crowbar. George Sandys, in anger, declared "that a more damned ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... let him off with a little slyness personal to Mr Dombey. Therefore, on the removal of the cloth, the Major developed himself as a choice spirit in the broader and more comprehensive range of narrating regimental stories, and cracking regimental jokes, which he did with such prodigal exuberance, that Carker was (or feigned to be) quite exhausted with laughter and admiration: while Mr Dombey looked on over his starched cravat, like the Major's proprietor, or like a stately showman who was ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... was far ahead of the fox again. At last Viggo had him cornered, but just as he would have caught the goose, Peter stretched out his left leg and meant to trip Viggo, but his skate caught in a frozen twig and—thump! there lay Peter Lightfoot, the ice cracking all ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... crackling of boughs and filling of bags, and cracking of nuts, and wild cries in pursuit of startled hare or rabbit, and though Ambrose and Stephen indignantly repelled the idea of Saint John's Wood being named in the same day with their native forest, it is doubtful whether ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... pulled over their screwed-up eyes, were pensively scratching in the crumbling snow with the long stems of their unlighted torches. The grey shock of hair positively stood up straight above the red face of Mr. Ratsch, and his voice, that brazen voice, was cracking from the strain he was putting on it. 'Where are the pine branches? pine branches! this way! the branches of pine!' he yelled. 'They'll be bearing out the coffin directly! The pine! Hand over those pine branches! Look alive!' he cried once more, and dashed into the house. It appeared that in ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... the coals, and a moment later the flames that played among the closely-written sheets lighted her face. Nothing but a blackened parchment now for all that proud dream of fame! The room grew dark again, and only the coals cracking and snapping, and the steady ticking of the old clock on the mantel piece above her head, broke the stillness. It was done. She went to the window and ...
— Beth Woodburn • Maud Petitt
... mounted at the far corner of the table top is invaluable in the preparation of tubular apparatus with sharp curves, and for coating newly-made glass apparatus with a layer of soot to prevent too rapid cooling, and its usually associated result—cracking. ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... be for ever calculating, devising, and plotting for the future,' said Mr Pecksniff, smiling more and more, and looking at the fire as a man might, who was cracking a joke with it: 'I am weary of such arts. If our inclinations are but good and open-hearted, let us gratify them boldly, though they bring upon us Loss ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... fire, while the white men crept under the canoes and were soon fast asleep. In the morning it was still snowing, but about noon it cleared up. It was freezing hard, and the snow glistened as the sun burst through the clouds. The stillness of the forest was broken now by sharp cracking sounds as boughs of trees gave way under the weight of the snow; in the open it lay more ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... commenced fixing their winter quarters, while the youngsters went out in search of game, and soon brought in a large supply. One day, during the absence of the young wolves, the old one amused himself in cracking the large bones of a moose. "Hiawatha," said he, "cover your head with the robe, and do not look at me while I am at these bones, for a piece may fly in your eye." He did as he was told; but, looking through a rent that was in the robe, he saw what ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... that Cavendish should not recognise the island—both by sight and from his reckoning—as the one on which Roger and his little crew had been left; yet all three of the vessels comprising his squadron were cracking on in chase of the Black Pearl, and evincing not the least interest in the sand-bank, which they were leaving on their ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... of his father—and there was bitterness in his heart and frustration, and a rebellious, smouldering anger. The old man would never know how close he had come to cracking up. ...
— Rescue Squad • Thomas J. O'Hara
... was a danger-signal posted farther down where the ice was thin. He had avoided it all the afternoon, but intent on cutting some fancy figure one of the boys had taught him, he did not notice how near he was to the dangerous spot until he heard a cracking noise all round him, and it was too late to save himself from a plunge into the ...
— Flip's "Islands of Providence" • Annie Fellows Johnston
... lay opinion; and now for the clerical. It was expressed by a Presbyterian divine, the Reverend Dr. J.S. Ramsey, who stood over the coffin of "Matt", and without cracking a smile declared that he had been "a statesman who was always on the right side of every ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... places and people, and I knew well what castles the Shaker houses are for the world's people outside. Hiram was full of talk going over. He seemed to have been bottling it up, and I was the first auditor for his wrath. "I know 'm," he said, cracking his whip over his horses' heads. "They be sharp at a bargain, they be. If they've contrived to get a hold on Bessie Stewart, property and all, it'll go hard on ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... that he was! and a doctor, too, feelin' his pulse. 'Is ut slow,' says I, 'doctor?' and draws a bottle of champagne. He could hardly stand before his first glass. 'Pon my hon'r, my lady, ye naver saw s'ch a change in a mortal bein.—Pole, didn't ye go 'ha, ha!' now, and seem to be nut-cracking with your fingers? He did; and if ye aver saw an astonished doctor! 'Why,' says I, 'doctor, ye think ut's maguc! Why, where's the secret? drink with 'm, to be sure! And you go and do that, my lord doctor, my dear Mr. Doctor! Do ut all round, and your patients 'll bless your feet." Why, isn't ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... called La Fratta, and still stands over the high altar—not, however, in its original frame, which was removed in the seventeenth century. It seems that there was a lunette over the top, containing a Pieta.[75] Terribly defaced by bad restoration, and the cracking of the later paint, it is still a very beautiful work, and its predella has all the qualities of boldness and freedom characteristic of the master's best times. Some of the figures are perhaps too obviously life-studies, especially ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... Because the weight of the water, no, the weight of the body in the water is equal to the weight of the what? Or is it the volume is equal to the weight? It's a law something like that. Vance in High school cracking his fingerjoints, teaching. The college curriculum. Cracking curriculum. What is weight really when you say the weight? Thirtytwo feet per second per second. Law of falling bodies: per second per second. They all fall to the ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... veins rushed to his heart, and he shook in every limb as he made this discovery. A species of vertigo seized him. His brain reeled. He fancied that the whole fabric of the bridge was cracking over head,—that the arch was tumbling upon him,—that the torrent was swelling around him, whirling him off, and about to bury him in the deafening abyss. He shrieked with agony, and clung with desperate tenacity to the roughened stones. But calmer thoughts quickly succeeded. ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... summer quarters at Tupelo. Our principal occupation at this place was playing poker, chuck-a-luck and cracking graybacks (lice). Every soldier had a brigade of lice on him, and I have seen fellows so busily engaged in cracking them that it reminded me of an old woman knitting. At first the boys would go off in the woods and hide to louse themselves, but that was unnecessary, the ground fairly ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... youth," says Solomon. "Train up a child in the way he should go," says the proverb, "and when he is old he will not depart from it." Be not afraid of the sneers of the ungodly. "As the cracking of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of a fool." "The fairest flower in the garden of creation," says Sir James E. Smith, "is a young mind, offering and unfolding itself to the influence of Divine Wisdom, as the heliotrope turns its sweet blossoms ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... very quaint. Thus the interrogation "what?" always excites the idea of a fat man cracking a long whip. They are not the capricious creations of the fancy of the moment, but are the regular concomitants of the words, and have been so as far back as the memory ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... seamen. My faith in this axiom was soon put to the proof. After a short sleep I was called on deck, as the vessel was suffering from great pressure. My own senses soon made it evident; every timber and plank was cracking and groaning, the vessel was thrown considerably over on her side, and lifted bodily, the bulkheads cracking, and treenails and bolts breaking with small reports. On reaching the deck, I saw indeed that the poor "Pioneer" was in sad peril; the deck was arching with the ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... ladder, which had been placed beside the machine, he allowed his weight to bear upon the fusilage, and proceeded to settle himself in his seat. But he, and the onlookers, were startled as he did so by an ominous cracking of wood. It grew louder; something serious and very unexpected was happening to the machine. As a matter of fact, and just as it stood there without having moved a yard, the whole of the flimsy structure parted in the middle, and the machine settled ...
— Learning to Fly - A Practical Manual for Beginners • Claude Grahame-White
... or more. Nor was this unintentional, gentle impact all. The instant after her shoulder had touched, startled by the contact, she flailed out with her tail. The blow smote the rail just for'ard of the fore-shrouds, splintering a gap through it as if it were no more than a cigar-box and cracking the covering board. ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... rush out, bent on slaughter. Perhaps the eye of some ever-watchful man in the covering boat has seen crouching figures in the dense undergrowth of the shores of the bay, and at once fires his rifle, and the recruiter jumps for his boat, and then there is a cracking of Winchesters from the covering boat, and a responsive banging of ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... the negroes came last. They were still astride of the bulwarks when Sakr-el-Bahr gave the word. Up the middle gangway ran a bo'sun and two of his mates cracking their long whips of bullock-hide. Down went the oars, there was a heave, and they shot out in the wake of the other two ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... by the hand, led her into the next room and opened the window to see what was going on outside, where the cracking of whips and several voices were to be heard. A servant was walking up and down the yard leading a large horse which he had just brought from the stable; the Baron was holding a smaller one, which bore a lady's saddle, while he carefully examined ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... The cracking of hard hoofs on stones caused him to turn toward camp, and as he emerged from the cedar grove he saw three Indian horsemen ride into the cleared space before the hogans. They were superbly mounted and well armed, and impressed ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... centuries have elapsed since these words were written; as he was an excellent farmer, he would not have mentioned the practice unless he considered the advice sound. It is quite possible that the vertical cracking of the bark on one side of a young transplanted tree may be due to a change from the cool north aspect to the heat of the south. At any rate the experiment is well worth trying, and nurserymen would not find it much trouble to run a chalk line down the ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... bearing of the tree and my own position, and then closing my eyes and uttering one comprehensive ejaculation of prayer, I inclined myself over towards the abyss, and after one breathless instant fell with a crash into the tree, the branches snapping and cracking with my weight, as I sunk lower and lower among them, until I was stopped by coming in contact with ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... evenly on one side of good stout tissue paper; let it dry, and then cut it up in stripes, about half or three quarters of an inch wide, for use. If it becomes too soft for summer use, add gum arabic; if too hard and cracking, add benzoin or gum tragicanth; if it gets too thick, ...
— The History and Practice of the Art of Photography • Henry H. Snelling
... streets, trees clipped to resemble brooms, and planted on pedestals of chalk, and a few other points, do not edify me. The French Opera, which I have heard to-night, disgusted me as much as ever; and the more for being followed by the Devin de Village, which shows that they can sing without cracking the drum of one's ear. The scenes and dances are delightful: the Italian comedy charming. Then I am in love with treillage and fountains, and will prove it at Strawberry. Chantilly is so exactly what it was when I saw it above twenty years ago, that I recollected the very position of ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... The faint cracking became louder, nearer, turned from a suspicion to a certainty and from a certainty to a fact. The bushes parted and Percy stood before us. All he saw was three elderly women eating frogs' legs round a fire under a cloud of mosquitoes. He stopped, dumbfounded, and in that instant we saw that ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... as Chippy saw the waggon an idea popped into his mind, and he hurried forward to meet the great vehicle. He kept among the bushes so that the driver did not see him. The latter, indeed, from his high perch, was too busy cracking his whip over his team to urge them to the ascent to see that small, gliding figure slipping through the gorse. So Chippy dodged behind the waggon, swung himself up by the tail-board, and climbed in as nimbly as a cat. ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... His theory of the | molecular bond won a Nobel Laureate. | | Read Watson's explanation of why Pauling | failed to crack the genetic code. | | Guenther Stent, the molecular biologist of | U.C. Berkeley is an avowed Kantian | who narrowly missed cracking the genetic | code, His philosophy of science is | highly relevant to the application of | neo-hermeneutics to contemporary biology. | | Today's philosophy of physics, as developed | by John Wheeler and David Bohm | describes a "Baconian" idea of the ...
— Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature • Sir Francis Bacon
... creek," said the Major, sharply, and he touched spurs to his horse. How they raced through the woods, cracking brush and whisking around trees, and how they thundered over the turf and clattered across the road and on! For a few moments the Major kept close to Chad, watching him anxiously, but the boy stuck to the big bay like a jockey, and he left Dan and Harry on their ponies far behind. All ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... once concluded that my excited fancy had deceived me)—it appeared to me that from some very remote portion of the mansion there came, indistinctly, to my ears, what might have been, in its exact similarity of character, the echo (but a stifled and dull one certainly) of the very cracking and ripping sound which Sir Launcelot had so particularly described. It was, beyond doubt, the coincidence alone which had arrested my attention; for, amid the rattling of the sashes of the casements, and the ordinary commingled noises of the still increasing ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... my bantering and said in a tone such as he might have used before a class of students in the gentle art of scientific safe-cracking: "Now if the power company's curve is just the same to-night as last night, that will show how the thing was done. I wanted to be sure of it, so I thought I'd try this apparatus which I smuggled in from Paris last ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... Bavaria and the Palatinate tomorrow. This was not enough. When he arrived within ten leagues of Paris, he put on an enormous pair of jack-boots, mounted a post-horse, and arrived in the court of the palace cracking his whip. If this had been real impatience, and not charlatanism, he would have taken horse twenty leagues from Paris."—"I don't agree with you," said a gentleman whom I did not know; "impatience sometimes seizes ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... had to give. In return they asked to see the craft he proposed swapping, and were then conducted to a hillside where a canoe had but recently been dug out of the dry muck and earth in which it was buried over winter to save it from drying, cracking or warping. ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... A terrible cracking silenced the exclamations. The maddened animals had burst open the doors of the stables. They passed in the yellow flood, rolled about, carried away by the current. The sheep were tossed about like dead leaves, whirling in bands in the eddies. The cows and the horses ...
— The Flood • Emile Zola
... seek help for an orphan's home. It was a pathetic mess at times, but so are all defiant variations from the accustomed drift of things. In the hardy language of Napoleon, one cannot make an omelette without cracking ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... the Mariposa and Lady Sunderbund smoking cigarettes, which these ladies continued to do a little defiantly. They had hoped to finish them before the bishop came up. The night was chilly, and a cheerful wood fire cracking and banging on the fireplace emphasized the ordinary heating. Mrs. Garstein Fellows, who had not expected so prompt an appearance of the men, had arranged her chairs in a semicircle for a little womanly gossip, and before she could intervene she found ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... on good terms with Matty? Ha, ha! that is a good joke; never go to Washington without cracking a bottle with the little fox, and staying over night with him. Me on good terms with Matty? We've had many a spree together! Yes, sir!" and the knowing one ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... about Captain Costigan. He knew me at once; and he says, 'Sir, your father acted like a gentleman, a Christian, and a man of honour. Maxima debetur puero reverentia. Give him my compliments. I don't know his highly respectable name.' His highly respectable name," says Clive, cracking with laughter—"those were his very words. 'And inform him that I am an orphan myself—in needy circumstances'—he said he was in needy circumstances; 'and I heartily wish he'd ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... straw-stacks, their rough flanks crawling, and in the folds the ewes, yet frail from their travail, stood stung and still, mothering their weak-kneed lambs. Beside the thud of the horse's hoofs toward town there was no sound on the road save a little, dry cracking of the frost. The doctor, as he started in his carriage for Davie's house, drew his robes closely about him and scowled at the fierceness of the blast; but Davie, riding far ahead, his elbows flying wildly ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... However, the Georgian Government has suffered from limited resources due to a chronic failure to collect tax revenues. Georgia's new government is making progress in reforming the tax code, enforcing taxes, and cracking down on corruption. Georgia also suffers from energy shortages; it privatized the T'bilisi electricity distribution network in 1998, but payment collection rates remain low, both in T'bilisi and throughout the regions. The ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... lying out in the middle of a sea of mud like three lone islets. Their shuddering subordinates were taking cover at long range, whispering among themselves and crouching in attitudes of dreadful expectancy like men awaiting the explosion of a mine or the cracking of Doom. As explosions of those dimensions are liable to be impartial in their attentions I took horse and rode afield. But according to my batman, who braved it out, the Lieutenant woke up first, exploded noisily and detonated the Field Officer who in turn detonated the Colonel. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 5, 1917 • Various
... for soon up came a nice maskalonge. Then, a few minutes later, came a rock bass—something for which he had not been looking. He grew interested, and forgot all about the noise he had heard, until the cracking of ...
— Guns And Snowshoes • Captain Ralph Bonehill
... those who took chances. The tenderfoot staked his claim on the chance of selling it again. The prospector toiled in his overland tunnel on the chance of cracking the apex of a vein. The small companies sank shafts on the chance of touching pay ore, the big companies tunneled deep and drifted wide in the hope of cutting several veins. The merchants built in the belief that the camp was a permanent town, and the gamblers took chances of ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... and all the promised sights; he scarcely gave himself the trouble to answer his tormentors, only vouchsafing sometimes to open his lips to say that he never meant to go to a country where people spoke a language that sounded like cracking walnuts; that he hated steamers; had no fancy for tumble-down castles; that it was so common to travel; there was more distinction in staying at home; that the field of Waterloo had been spoilt, and was not worth seeing; his ideas of glaciers would be ruined ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... glows red-hot in the winter. Newspapers, of the thinnest substance and the most microscopic type, and from every part of the Union, are scattered about in profusion; the human species of every kind may be seen variously occupied—groups talking, others roasting over the stove, many cracking peanuts, many more smoking, and making the pavement, by their united labours, an uncouth mosaic of expectoration and nutshells, varied occasionally with cigar ashes and discarded stumps. Here and there you see a pair of Wellington-booted ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... were defending the breach, the battering-ram was withdrawn; why, we were not long left in doubt. To our great horror, the battering, cracking sound was heard in the rear of the house. Still we were not at once to be defeated, and some of our party hurried to defend the spot. The attack on the front-door had cost the negroes so many lives that they were more cautious in approaching the ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... ate our luncheon as fast as we could (a very bad habit, which I don't mean to keep up for man or brother), and even though the others had begun long before we did, we finished while they were still cracking nuts and peeling apples, their spirits somewhat subdued ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... goes, the childish game of playing at horses is admirably calculated to increase health and vigour and needs no expensive resources. Yet what would be said and thought if a prelate and his suffragan ran nimbly out of a palace gate in a cathedral close, with little bells tinkling, whips cracking, and reins of red ribbon drawn in to repress the curvetting of the gaitered steed? There is nothing in reality more undignified about that than in hitting a little ball about over sandy bunkers. If the Prime Minister and the Lord Chief Justice trundled ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... and thousands of just such cases; and men bearing them, and cracking jokes, and hitting out as hard as they can. Jean de Rechamp knew this, and tried to crack jokes too—but he got his leg smashed just afterward, and ever since he'd been lying on a straw pallet under a horse-blanket, saying to ...
— Coming Home - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... during the years which rolled by between 1750 and 1758," he has said in his Tableau du Siecle de Louis XV. The evil, however, was hatching beneath the embers, and the last supports of the old French society were cracking up noiselessly. The Parliaments were about to disappear, the Catholic church was becoming separated more and more widely every day from the people of whom it claimed to be the sole instructress and directress. ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot |
